Stash Down 2009

OK, I blew it. I did not finish those two sweaters by the end of the week. I'll be lucky if I finish seaming up the Central Park Hoodie tonight. That's OK though. I was happily distracted by new library books, lace swatches, and an Amazon order that came yesterday. More on that later (and some book reviews to come!).

What I have also been doing is mulling over the state of my stash and how I'm going to get rid of all my current yarn by the end of the year. This does not mean that I cannot acquire more yarn this year, nor does it mean that I can only knit from my stash. It just means that I want to clear out the old stuff before it sits around for too long.

According to my Rav stash list, I have about 23,000 yards of yarn. I know! That's a lot. Not a ton by some standards, but much more than I need to have sitting around, that's for sure. If I want to get rid of it all by the end of the year, that means I need to knit up an average of 450 yards a week for the rest of the year.

Hmmm...not too bad, but assuming I also want to have a life, that might be a bit difficult. But we'll see. I'm going to try to keep track of how much yarn I have on a week-to-week basis. If I can figure out an easy way to put that on my sidebar, I'll stick something up there.

I'm looking forward to finishing up those two sweaters because I haven't taken the yarn off the stash list and that will knock a chunk off! :)

My Mother, the Knitter?

While many people learn to knit from a relative, normally a mother or grandmother, I am one of the many people who taught myself after a series of coincidences got my curiosity piqued. (I worked with another girl who knit, and then I moved across the street from a fabulous yarn store.) My own mother did not knit, and while she sewed lots of our clothes over the years, I never had the urge to learn that skill. (Until now, but that's another story.)

So it was welcome news when my mother announced a year or two ago that she planned to learn how to knit. My brother and I were supportive and offered our help, but like many people who make pronouncements about their intentions and then let them slide, nothing much came of it. Oh, she rustled up some ancient aluminum straights and some old acrylic yarn from the bowels of the house. She also visited the knitting group at the local college hoping, I think, that someone there would teach her the basics (they didn't). And last spring when my sister's friend was having a baby, she used it as an opportunity to teach herself how to knit a giant, acrylic garter-stitch blanket.

It was not until I was home over the holidays that she really revved up her engines and became serious about knitting. She wanted to make a sweater. A pullover, to be precise. We scoured the pattern listings on Ravelry: page after page of worsted-weight pullovers, but she saw one she liked on the first page and that was the one she was determined to make. The sweater that called to her was Wisteria, by Kate Gilbert. Our next stop was the LYS so she could pick out some yarn (I recommended Cascade 220 for her first sweater: sturdy, big on yardage, short on cost, and lots of colors to choose from). After sending the poor shop worker up and down the stairs to check on the quantities of her chosen colors, we were invited down to the store rooms ourselves so we could see which colors had sweater quantities, and of those, which color she liked best. We left the shop with a nice, dark green (which will help hide wonky bits), a new Addi circular, and a cable needle.

Now, by regular standards, this sweater isn't too complicated: knit in the round from the top down in one piece, and mostly stockinette except for the top and bottom cables. But it has been a huge learning curve for my mother. I don't think my brother or I were aware of just how much she didn't know. She didn't know how to purl, and was wrapping the stitches backwards. She didn't know how to do m1 increases. She didn't know how to cable. She didn't know how to knit in the round. She didn't even know how to check her own gauge! My brother and I each helped her as much as we could before we moved back to our respective states after vacation was over. The last I heard, she had ripped out her collar for the third time after various mishaps, but she is still determined to get through it somehow. I'm sure she will, but I'm sending her a Lucy Neatby DVD for her birthday next week just in case. ;-)

Swatch It

Back in December, I was perusing the discussion boards on Ravelry and found a post asking for swatchers for J. Knits, a hand-dyed yarn company in New Hampshire. 'EARN FREE YARN!' caught my attention--what better way for an unemployed person to earn yarn than to knit for it? I'm always willing to test-drive some new stuff so I sent off an email letting them know of my interest and waited for a reply (while they waited out the power outages in New England).

Long story short, they accepted me as a swatcher of their lace yarn and I returned from the library yesterday to find an envelope of colorful mini-skeins on my doorstep. Just look at those fun colors! The yarn is 100% alpaca and is so soft to the touch. I can't wait to get started! I have the choice of knitting plain stockinette or doing lace patterns, as long as the swatches conform to their size requests and gauge.

I'm going to have some fun this weekend trying out different stitch patterns from the Barbara Walker books I picked up yesterday. I was thinking about dabbling in some lace designs this year, and this seems like a good place to start. I'll keep y'all posted on my progress as I discover my inner Anne Hanson. ;-)

The Day of Moving Backward

No progress yet on finishing up those two sweaters. I kind of needed a break from manic cabled cardi knitting yesterday so I whipped up a Gala hat for my sister's birthday. It's blocking now, so I'll post pictures tomorrow. Thank you to everyone who sent me kind wishes yesterday. It's always sad when an important figure in your life moves on.

Today seems to be The Day of Moving Backward. Or maybe The Day of Sisyphus? Not in any huge way, but it seems as though all day I have been trying to make progress and I come to find out there is more there to do than I thought.

It all started out innocently enough when I was reading through my subscribed blogs this morning. Every time the counter made it down to 1 unread blog, another person posted something. Then another. I was chasing that elusive '0' for about 15 minutes!

Then I went to the library to return that you-know-what book (unfinished) and to pick up 3 books that had arrived from my hold list. It turns out that there were 11 books from my list that all happened to arrive on the same day. I didn't even realize until I got home that I had checked out two copies of the same book! Thankfully, 4 of them are Barbara Walker treasuries so that knocks the must-read list down to 7.

And finally, I was just downloading my stashed yarns to an Excel spreadsheet so I could keep track of which yarns I started the year with in order to make sure I use them all up by the end of the year. While I was doing this, I discovered 33 skeins of yarn that I had never added to Ravelry. WTF?!? My stash isn't that big! I was just having a discussion with my brother yesterday about how we can't understand who these people are who just "discover" bags of yarn in their houses. Eek! But to be fair, I was very aware that they were in my stash--I just didn't realize that I hadn't added them to Ravelry yet. It did bump my total yardage up by about 3,000 though. :(

All right, time to suck it up and tackle that CPH. If I knit fast enough, I'll probably have enough yarn left for the button band and collar, right? I just hope I don't discover that I still need to knit a sleeve or the entire back or something. ;-)

So Long, George

I got some sad news today from a fellow undergrad theater major. Our beloved director, George, passed away during brain surgery earlier this week. He was only 11 days shy of his 80th birthday.

George had more energy in his late 60s/early 70s than a lot of the college students who passed across his stages. His creativity was boundless, and despite having been around the block more than a few times, he always made us feel as though we were the most clever and innovative students he ever had. He was the kind of professor who, if you saw him in the campus grill or walking across the quad, you were always eager to call over for a burger or a chat. He never failed to entertain us with his stories of shooting films in New York on the fly, taking acting classes with a young woman named Norma Jeane, or traveling the country as Hamlet when he was in his teens. We were all proud that "the old guy" was our friend.

George was my favorite theater prof, my best director, and also my introduction to real film studies. It was because of the foundation he provided me with that I went on to get a second degree in film/media/culture, and eventually went to graduate school for the entertainment industry. And even though his mind started to fail him even while he was still my advisor at school, I always remember him fondly for his interest and encouragement.

He will be deeply missed.

Two Sweaters by the End of the Week?

See that pile of hand-knitted goodness? Those are the pieces to my Central Park Hoodie, which were finished before the Christmas holidays. I put them on hold because, well, I was running out of yarn. It seems to be a common thing with me these days. *sigh*

Anyway, because I didn't have a chance to block the pieces before I went out of town, I started a different sweater, Cassidy, in its place. I will be finishing up the second sleeve of Cassidy today. Then, while those pieces are blocking, I can seam up the CPH and assess what I can do with my remaining yarn. I'm hoping for button bands and a ribbed collar, at the very least.

In other craftiness, The Brain and I decided that we wanted to add some more color to our apartment. San Diego is filled with a lot of hand-crafted, colorful artsiness (see the Spanish Village Art Center for an example--we like to walk down there on the weekends and browse the galleries). We also like to browse through all the arty goodness at Bazaar del Mundo, and were pleasantly surprised with a gift card to their shops by The Brain's parents after their visit with us last November.

The first thing we knew we wanted to pick up were some lengths of hand-woven cotton cloth in some vibrant colors. Combined with a couple of wooden dowels from the hardware store, we think these will make some lovely wall hangings for our bedroom. The only thing stalling us now is the question of how to attach the cloth to the dowels. The Brain is all for just gluing the cloth around the dowels at the top and bottom, but a) we don't have a glue gun, and b) I'm afraid the glue will soak through the cloth and look tacky. I would prefer to fold the cloth over the dowel and sew it down, but we don't have a sewing machine and I'm not sure either of us are confident enough with our hand-stitching to make that idea look presentable. So for now, our pretty cloths are languishing in the office, waiting for something to give. I have a feeling I'll end up caving and going with the glue idea, but don't tell The Brain that! ;-)

My other favorite find at the shop is the variety of colorful paper flowers they have all over the stores. We put together this bouquet of six huge blooms for about $20. They add so much brightness to the dreary winter living room that I want to get more for every room of the apartment. Love! :)

How to Offend a Knitter

Alternatively titled, "How to Make Sure No One Knits for You Again. Ever."

Late last spring, my younger brother begged me to make him a hoodie. We looked through several pattern books, and he settled on Under the Hoodie by Kristin Spurkland, from Stitch 'n' Bitch. Yes, it was written as a woman's pattern but that wasn't really an issue. It's a simple, boxy pullover with a hood. He wanted it in a solid color and chose Berroco Ultra Alpaca in Pea Soup, so I got started and over the course of two weeks while I was also writing my Masters Thesis, I cranked out this sweater and mailed it off to him with the express understanding that all he had to do for me in exchange was take a couple of photos with him wearing it so I could see how it looked.

Well, he put it on and declared that it was too short, even though I had measured him and knit the sweater to his specs. My knitting brother was nice enough to order more yarn, pick up stitches near the bottom of the sweater, and knit a couple more inches onto the bottom. As far as we know, he still hasn't worn the thing. When I was in town to help my parents move back in October, the sweater arrived in the mail from our brother and The Ungrateful One didn't even try it on. It lay draped over the back of a chair in the basement the entire time I was there.

When I was in town for Christmas I tried again to get him to wear the sweater for photos, but I was continuously rebuffed. My knitting brother reports that he once made a scarf (per request) for The Ungrateful One and the only time he has seen it since he finished it, it was crumpled up into a ball in the corner of the bedroom, next to the radiator.

By contrast, when I was in town in October one of my sisters was praising my knitting so much that I gave her my Mini Clapotis, and then spent the next two months knitting up scarves and leg warmers for her that she raved over repeatedly. I just got a card in the mail from her today, thanking me AGAIN for all the beautiful things I made for her.

Guess who will be getting more knitted items for her birthday in a couple of weeks?

Guess who will never be getting a hand-knitted item from me ever again?